"They say I speak into this and you hear me and speak back. Speak! I hear later. Maybe get back to you."

As good as it was to see Sapphire and Edlin again, all these large gatherings in short succession were beginning to fray Firekeeper's nerves somewhat. So she'd escaped to a quiet corner of the park to be alone with her thoughts- truly alone, as it turned out, since the massive quantities of food this morning had made Blind Seer hungry, and so off he'd gone to hunt a few rabbits.

[ooc: for ooooone.]

The cats- Muffin and Lady- had at some point decided to ignore cautiously tolerate their new wolfy roommates, and were curled up on Angela's bed.

Angela was sure to be pleased to know that as soon as they arrived, Blind Seer headed for his side of the room, thank you.

Firekeeper, meanwhile, went for her (little used) desk and dug out the holo with the Jedi stories, letting a random file play. Much like Darkest Night, she'd missed being able to do this. And it was a good way of distracting herself from thoughts of the Meddler, and what his favor might be- or when he'd show up to request it.

The door was open!

[ooc: expecting a barefoot buddy and a blonde canary, if they'd like!]

Showers were not something Firekeeper typically bothered with, not with plenty of natural resources around the island for bathing. But after several moonspans on the road, a fair number of battles and, oh yes, recently recovering from a magical plague, it definitely sounded like a really good idea.

So after a short stop in town to handwavily return Smudge to the stables, she checked in at the school office (and found out that it hadn't been moonspans here, she hadn't even missed the start of fall semester) she took a nice long hot shower, and then headed back to her room with Blind Seer.

It took her weary senses a few moments to figure out that something was... different. Someone had moved in to the unoccupied side of the room in her absence, and decorated their side fo the room. Also, there were cats who'd retreated under the bed almost as soon as she and Blind Seer had entered the room. Too tired to reason with them, she let them be, choosing instead to flop on her bed.

The door? Still open just a crack.

[the post, like the door, is open!]

With Ynamynet's formal surrender, ( a meeting had been called... )
[ooc: Eeeestablishy. Off (Fandom) island stuff NFB obvs, but that Arthur, Francine, Merlin and Blysse & Blind Seer were in the Preserve is fine.]

It would be nice if the Nexus Islands would respect that people trying to recover from plague could really only handle one calamity at a time, but no. The morning brought reports from Plik and Harjeedian, and the knowledge that ( they had a problem:... )
[ooc: preplayed with the magically delicious bigdamndestiny, grrrreat bitch_prince and the irrezzzzistable thatsamilkshake. NFB, NFI, OOC welcome.]

It was midmorning of the day following the night assault on the Nexus Islands, and the group had begun to make preparations for the onset of querinalo. They weren't sure when exactly it would strike -- or who -- and so were ( making the most of what time they had. )

[OOC: preplayed with the ever-fantastic bigdamndestiny, bitch_prince, and thatsamilkshake. NFI, NFB, OOC welcome.]

They'd regrouped within the twins' cottage following the surrender of the island's inhabitants, where Tiniel and Isende promised to explain both why they'd returned to the Once Dead, and why the island's surrender had been so complete.

"In addition to the Once Dead and Twice Dead," Tiniel began, "There's a third group, those who had never experienced querinalo because they had no magical talent at all. They call these the Never Lived, and together with the Twice Dead make up the majority of the island's population, though the power was all in the hands of the Once Dead. These Once Dead were far from benevolent rulers. Bitterness over being exiled from their homelands transformed into a form of ruthlessness when it came to dealing with those who they held power over, even to the point of using their own people in their experiments with blood magic," his expression showed how fond he was of that particular idea.

Isende picked up from there: "When we were speaking tonight, it wasn't us. I think that the Once Dead put some sort of controlling spell on us. They did a lot of things to us when they first caught us, when we were so stupid as to walk right into their arms. I think that they set some sort of sign or signal so that if they whistled, we'd come running like bird dogs to their master.

Apparently, the spell that Firekeeper and Arthur interruped was being fed with energy from most of the islands' Once Dead. When that flow was interrupted, it killed them. Now, it seems the remaining population has decided that as a whole you can't be any worse than their previous rulers."

Now all that remained was deciding what to do about the fact that they found themselves the inadvertent conquerors of the Nexus Islands. That, and the threat of plague- querinalo- that grew closer every moment.

[ooc: open to them what's in Firekeeper's world!]

It didn't take Firekeeper long to set up the "camp". A couple of sleeping bags (though she doubted she'd be using hers) was all they really needed, as well as one of those things called "flash-lights" just in case.

So really, all she and Blind Seer needed was their fellow camper now.

[ooc: for she who is camping with wolves!]

Firekeeper, aka Lady Blysse Norwood of Kestrel House:
( cut because I manage to ramble even in bullet points )

The Player:
+ Is around to play M-F evenings from 9 to about 2am EST. Plus during lunch breaks via my phone browser if you don't mind extreme slowplay. Also weekends barring any errand-running, because I do have a life outside the computer sometimes.
+ 's brain hurts from having to type in Firekeeper's oh-so-broken grammar all the time.
+ Tries to sign on to AIM as kestrelswolf but usually forgets.
+ Is, however, reachable at kestrelswolf@gmail.com.
+ Totally promised a bunch of people ebook copies of the first four books and needs to remember to upload those sometime.
+ Tried to post this like thirty times. And that's not an exaggeration, LJ kept complaining that I wasn't using UTF-8 encoding. Whatever that means.

The convenience in portal travel was supposed to lie in the fact that it was instantaneous, or nearly so. Certainly Portalocity's penchant for depositing its customers in less than ideal locales was not a selling point. But it was definitely easier than walking all the way to Washington (the state, that is), so it was that at 9am Fandom Time, three Fandom residents stepped into a portal.

At approximately 12:13pm Pacific Time, the trio stepped out of the portal alongside a stretch of highway in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. As luck would have it, just in time to see a car whiz past. Not that Firekeeper or Blind Seer would've thought of hitchhiking. But Tahiri might've.

Regardless, it wasn't an issue because there didn't appear to be any more cars. Also it was ridiculously hot out. And... it had been quite a while since any of them had had anything to eat.

Wolves, as most documentaries about them will tell you, have been known to travel up to 20 miles in a day for food. It's debatable, but highly unlikely, that this is what any of those documentaries had in mind.

Then again, they had a Tusken Raider with them, and they'd come from Fandom, so these weren't your typical Discovery Channel wolves anyway.

[ooc: For the barefoot buddy, who was modded with permission.... OR WAS SHE? Also, off-island so NFB]

Alright, meant to post this this morning but oh well. I'm posting it now. I'm off to visit family for the weekend, so the barefoot buddy weetuskenraider has modding rights if needed. Not sure at this point if I'll be around to post The Gig on Sunday, but I shall definitely be back in time for moving-back-to-dorms-ness on Monday!

Dirt-streaked, bruised, scratched, and looking entirely too pleased than any normal person should about such things, Firekeeper and Blind Seer arrived back at their room on Saturday evening.

Though the state of her clothes after three weeks in the preserve hardly bothered her, Firekeeper knew well enough that humans had different ideas about such things, and so changed into a fresh t-shirt and trousers. A shower would have to wait until tomorrow. Right now she was going to flop down on the bed that she hadn't missed at all. Yep.

[ooc: guess who's back, back again? open, if you'd like.]

Firekeeper woke on Monday morning feeling strangely restless. She briefly considered going down to the salle, but quickly dismissed that idea. Swordwork was good exercise, but the problem was that it was a human exercise. Everything here was. And she- and Blind Seer- were wolves. She was beginning to worry that perhaps they'd forgotten that amidst the comforts this place offered.

It was clear, then, what she needed to do. With Joan's help, she wrote a few quick notes that read "Gone away. Will return" and signed them with her usual signature. To Dinah's, she added two things: a smiley face, and then the Liglim symbol for "danger" which she then crossed out. Hopefully that would get the message across.

After slipping the notes under the doors of anyone who she thought might be concerned, she and Blind Seer headed for the weapons locker to retrieve her bow. That accomplished, they then made their way to the Preserve. Time to just be wolves for a while.

[ooc: Yep. I'm outta here for a couple weeks. If you think you got a note, you did. Except Dinah, who gets one whether she likes it or not. Mwhahaha.]

When Tamara Gardener went to sleep on Sunday night, the images dancing in her head that then became dreams were of ice cream, ball pits, adventures and trees that grew chocolate. Sometime during the night, that changed.
( cut for teal deer and disturbing imagery... involving deer. )
When Firekeeper the wolf woke on Monday morning, it was with those nightmares that she now knew to be memories tumbling about in her head.

With that knowledge also came that as to the owner of the voice. Defier-of-the-Deities. Questioner. He'd saved her then, and he'd saved her when Magic's tower fell... he wouldn't be around to save her a third time, and that truth stung hard and deep, sharper than any blade could hope to be.

She left Blind Seer asleep on the soft, human bed and stalked out of the room. She very much needed to not be here right now.

[ooc: dream text pretty much lifted right from canon, yeah.]

It was dawn, which meant if she were back home, right now she'd be expected to be awake and helping with the chores for the day. But she wasn't home, she was here, which meant playing and not chores and why wasn't Joan awake, anyway?

Wake up, Joan, wake up! She soon would be, if the girl and wolf puppy bouncing on the end of her bed had anything to say about it.

( cut for preplay )

[ooc: Preplayed with joan_notjane; NFI. And yes, wee Firekeeper/Blysse will be calling herself Tamara all weekend. Girl has far too manynames!]

Firekeeper was, of all things, studying. Not anything school-related of course, since that would require reading.

But she had the Jedi holorecordings Tahiri had given her, and was listening with rapt attention. Not being able to use this "Force" meant many of the lessons weren't all that useful, but that didn't make them any less interesting.

Blind Seer had gone off hunting, so the door was cracked open for whenever he felt like returning.

[ooc: or, you know, if anyone felt like stopping by.]